Public Interest, Private Enterprise

Vol. 18 No. 4
Editor: Martha L. Golar, Esq.
September 2013
THE EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL ELLEN P. HERMANSON MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM
Litigating for the Cure: Public Interest, Private Enterprise
and the Role of the Courts in the Business of Cancer Research
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
6:00 - 8:30 PM
New York City Bar Association
42 West 44th Street, 2nd Floor Meeting Hall
Dr. Larry Norton will present the latest developments in the fight against breast cancer
to be followed by the program
Panel of Judges
Hon. Helen Freedman, NYS, Appellate Divn, 1st Dept.
Hon. Judith S. Kaye, Chief Judge, NYS Court of Appeals (Retired), Moderator
Hon. Loretta Preska, Chief Judge, U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y.
Panel of Experts
Robert Cook-Deegan, MD, Research Professor, Genome Ethics, Law & Policy, Duke Univ.
Larry Norton, MD, Deputy Physician-in-Chief for Breast Cancer Programs, MSKCC
Joseph Opper, Esq., Partner, Garwin Gerstein & Fisher LLP
Fran Visco, JD, President, National Breast Cancer Coalition
Sponsor
The Ellen P. Hermanson Foundation
Presenting Organizations
Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York
The New York Women’s Bar Association
Symposium Co-Chairs
Hon. Shirley Werner Kornreich, Mikki Golar, Esq., Barbara A. Ryan, Esq.
CLE
Professional Practice- 2.0 credits, qualification pending
Open to the public without charge - Refreshments will be served
To reserve a space please email Executive Director, Jennifer Fiorentino
at jenfiorentino@aol.com or call (212) 289-9720
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CANCER SCREENINGS UNDER THE PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT
The Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act (ACA) helps make
prevention affordable and accessible for
all Americans by requiring health plans
to cover preventive services and by
eliminating cost sharing (i.e., co-payment or co-insurance) for those services.
Under the ACA, women’s preventive health care - such as mammograms,
screenings for cervical cancer, prenatal
care, and other services - generally must
be covered by health plans with no cost
sharing. The new rules apply to policies
that took effect after September 23,
2010. The rules allow for exceptions
where insurers may charge a co-pay for
a preventive visit under the following
circumstance:
• When the patient is enrolled in a
“grandfathered” plan that has made
no changes to its benefits and, thus,
is not subject to regulation under the
health reform law;
• When the physician is out-of-network for the patient’s plan; and
• When services for another problem
are provided during the same visit.
Grandfathered plans are covered by
state laws, which vary, and other federal laws. Many states require that private
insurance companies, Medicaid, and
public employee health plans provide
coverage and reimbursement for specific health services and procedures. In
New York, the requirement applies to a
baseline mammogram for ages 35-39,
every year for 40+, or physician recommendation.
As part of the ACA, Medicare covers
the full cost of a mammogram once
every 12 months. Women are eligible
for Medicare if they are age 65 and older, are disabled, or have end-stage renal
disease. Medicare also pays for a clinical breast exam when it is performed for
screening or prevention.
For a current list of government-recommended preventive services that are
fully covered under the ACA, you can
visit www.healthcare.gov and click on
the topic “Prevention”. When delivered
by an in-network provider, the website
indicates that “comprehensive coverage
for women’s preventive care” includes
the following:
1. Anemia screening on a routine
basis for pregnant women
2. Breast Cancer Genetic Test
Counseling (BRCA) for women at
higher risk for breast cancer
3. Breast Cancer Mammography
screenings every 1 to 2 years for women
over 40
4. Breast Cancer Chemoprevention
counseling for women at higher risk
5. Breastfeeding comprehensive
support and counseling from trained
providers, and access to breastfeeding
supplies, for pregnant and nursing
women
6. Cervical Cancer screening for sexually active women
7. Chlamydia Infection screening for
younger women and other women at
higher risk
8. Contraception: Food and Drug
Administration-approved contraceptive
methods, sterilization procedures, and
patient education and counseling, as
prescribed by a health care provider for
women with reproductive capacity (not
including abortifacient drugs). This
does not apply to health plans spon-
sored by certain exempt “religious
employers.”
9. Domestic and interpersonal violence screening and counseling for all
women
10. Folic Acid supplements for
women who may become pregnant
11. Gestational diabetes screening
for women 24 to 28 weeks pregnant and
those at high risk of developing gestational diabetes
12. Gonorrhea screening for all
women at higher risk
13. Hepatitis B screening for pregnant women at their first prenatal visit
14. HIV screening and counseling
for sexually active women
15. Human Papillomavirus (HPV)
DNA Test every 3 years for women
with normal cytology results who are 30
or older
16. Osteoporosis screening for
women over age 60 depending on risk
factors
17. Rh Incompatibility screening for
all pregnant women and follow-up testing for women at higher risk
18. Sexually Transmitted Infections
counseling for sexually active women
19. Syphilis screening for all pregnant women or other women at
increased risk
20. Tobacco Use screening and interventions for all women, and expanded
counseling for pregnant tobacco users
21. Urinary tract or other infection
screening for pregnant women
22. Well-woman visits to get recommended services for women under 65
Open enrollment starts October 1,
2013. Coverage starts as soon as
January 1, 2014.
JALBCA’S SUSAN SOLOMON INTERN
Samantha Kopf is a student at Pace University School of Law, having previously attended
Barnard College. She worked in publishing and journalism for several years prior to entering
law school, and participated in the development of a breast cancer book to be published in 2014.
As with all JALBCA interns, Samantha is assisting the co-Chairs of JALBCA’s Annual
Symposium, researching and drafting materials necessary for this educational effort.
2
NEWS BRIEFS
Neoadjuvant Therapy Options and
Clinical Trials in Breast Cancer
A session at the annual American
Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)
meeting, held May 31-June 4, 2013,
was devoted to neoadjuvant therapy
options in breast cancer. The session
was Chaired by Dr. Angela DeMichele,
MD, associate professor of medicine at
the Hospital of the University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. ASCO
interviewed her about the subject and
her comments follow.
Typically, neoadjuvant or preoperative therapy is used in patients who are
candidates to receive chemotherapy. In
this usage, chemotherapy is given prior
to surgery, rather than post-surgery
where it would be used to prevent the
cancer from recurring. A series of studies compared giving the same therapy
pre- and post- surgery and found that it
was equally effective. The benefits to
preoperative therapy are several. First,
previously inoperable tumors are now
down-staged if they respond and can
be resected. Second, patients who
would need a mastectomy may,
through shrinkage of the tumor, now
have the opportunity for a lumpectomy
and breast conservation. Further,
neoadjuvant therapy provides an
opportunity to test the effectiveness of
the drugs on the tumor and, therefore,
also the microscopic cells that may be
in the bloodstream. Dr. DeMichele
stated that women who have an excellent response to chemotherapy given
pre-surgery have good prognosis, and
in fact a better prognosis compared to
women whose tumors do not respond
to the chemotherapy.
Examples of neoadjuvant agents
that are currently in development for
breast cancer are drugs targeted to
HER2 such as lapatinib and PARP
inhibitors in women who have triplenegative breast cancer. A real-time
readout on whether a drug is active or
not occurs. As a result, the oncologist
will know whether the patients do or
do not respond to the drugs, unlike the
situation after surgery where a large
number of patients are treated with
drugs which may not be effective.
Advance knowledge of whether a drug
works on a patient’s particular tumor is
the ultimate in personalized medicine.
The drugs that are actually tested in the
neoadjuvant setting are usually the
ones that are already known to be safe
– not the newest drugs.
Dr. DeMichele also discussed the
recent FDA draft guidelines on methods to accelerate drug approval
through neoadjuvant therapy clinical
trials. In the typical post-surgery clinical trial, a very large adjuvant trial is
designed with thousands of patients
over 5 to 10 years where the researcher
waits to see if the patient getting the
new therapy relapses more or less frequently compared to patients who
receive the standard of care and, therefore, whether the drug is or is not effective. In a neoadjuvant clinical setting,
which can be much smaller (a few hundred patients), the researcher sets up
surrogate markers (early indicators that
accurately reflect whether a patient’s
tumor will relapse or whether a patient
will die of the disease) and learns much
earlier whether the drug is shrinking
the tumor more than would occur with
the standard of care. Provisional
approval from the FDA could be available, with a confirmatory trial to follow.
Additionally,
Dr.
DeMichele
explained what a “pathological com-
plete response” is in connection with a
clinical trial. She said that the pathologically complete response is the trial
endpoint where the post-surgery
pathologist sees in a breast tissue specimen that there are no residual cancer
cells, as they have been eradicated
from the pre-surgery therapy. This, she
said, is highly associated with a good
long-term outcome in triple-negative
breast cancer and HER2-positive
breast cancer. But, in estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer, tumors paradoxically grow more slowly and tend
to be less responsive to chemotherapy
and the correlation with attaining a
pathologically complete response and
actually having a good outcome does
not hold very well. Therefore, the
drugs that are most likely to follow the
FDA neoadjuvant approval pathway
are ones that are targeted to patients
with HER2-positive or triple-negative
breast cancer, and researchers still need
to define the appropriate surrogate endpoints for women who have estrogenreceptor–positive breast cancer.
Finally, where it is learned that a
tumor does not respond to a drug in
neoadjuvant trials, the challenge faced
by researchers, where residual tumor
remains, will be to determine an appropriate post-surgery treatment. Dr.
DeMichele indicated that, in the future,
she expects to see the development of
post-neoadjuvant trials (strategies to
try to add additional therapies after
surgery for patients who did not
respond well to the pre-surgery treatment).
Source:
http://www.cancernetwork.com/
conference-reports/asco2013/breastcancer/content/article/10165/2144393
ANNUAL COURTHOUSE ALERT COCKTAIL RECEPTION KICK-OFF
JALBCA and The Brooklyn Women’s Bar Association scheduled its kick-off reception for the annual mammogram van
program on Wednesday, September 11, 2013 at the Appellate Division, Second Department Courthouse in Brooklyn.
Hon. A. Gail Prudenti served as Honorary Event Chair and Hon. Ellen Spodek and Hon. William C. Thompson
(Retired) served as Event Co-Chairs.
3
CALENDAR/CONTACTS______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
ADELPHI NY STATEWIDE BREAST
CANCER
Hotline & Support Program
Adelphi University School of Social Work
Garden City, NY 11530
www.breastcancerhotline@adelphi.edu
CancerCare
275 Seventh Avenue
New York, NY 10001
www.cancercare.org
1.800.813.HOPE (4673)
ELLEN’s RUN
200 West End Avenue, Suite 12 G
New York, NY 10023
www.ellensrun.org
212.840.0916
GILDA’s Club NYC
195 West Houston St.
New York, NY 10014
www.gildasclubnyc.org
212.647.9700
JALBCA
c/o Jennifer Fiorentino
Executive Director
1324 Lexington Avenue, PMB 324
New York, New York 10128
www.jalbca.org
Address Service Requested
4
MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING
CANCER CENTER
Post-Treatment Resource Program
Educational Forums
215 E. 68th St., Ground Fl.
New York, NY 10021
www.mskcc.org
212.717.3527
Bendheim Integrative Medicine Center
1429 First Avenue (at 74th Street)
New York, NY
SHARE
(Self-Help for Women with Breast
or Ovarian Cancer)
1501 Broadway, Ste. 704A
New York, NY
www.sharecancersupport.org
212.719.0364
Speak to a survivor toll-free:
1.866.891.2392
TO LIFE!
410 Kenwood Avenue
Delmar, NY 12054
518.439.5975
110 Spring Street
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
518.587.3820
www.tolife.org
YOUNG SURVIVAL COALITION
61 Broadway
New York, NY
www.youngsurvival.org
646.257.3025
NYU CANCER INSTITUTE
NYU Langone Medical Center
Community Lecture Series
550 First Avenue
New York, NY 10016
212.263.2266
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